A profile

Sun and ice

Finally a sunny day. Sunny, not warm; cold, guaranteed by a brisk wind off the ice.

For some time now I’ve been promising myself a trek to an un-named and seldom visited waterfall just above a small lake on the Flathead Reservation a dozen or so miles from my house and a mile or so off the highway. Today I strapped a tripod on my pack just in case the falls were thawed and snowshoes in case the snow was deep and headed for the falls. I didn’t need the tripod. It felt so good to be walking over the deep snow and following wolf tracks besides!

Amazing and wonderful how a falls will change over the seasons. Late in March of 2010 this one looked like this:

Today, this is how it was, the normally clear, clean falls blocked in many places by built-up ice dams:

Some water was still flowing beneath or behind the ice, visible just below the fringe area about in the center of the falls; not easy to get to for a close-up, but intriguing.

I will post more photos of the ice over the next few days.